DC's the sound of silence

THE SOUND OF SILENCE
A SEASON IN PURGATORY ...
... is the title of an old Patrick Dempsey flick and seems appropriate after
Dempsey and his fellow Rolex Series racers cleared out from this past
weekend's "Roar Before The 24" because this is ...

THE SOUND OF SILENCE

A SEASON IN PURGATORY ...

... is the title of an old Patrick Dempsey flick and seems appropriate after
Dempsey and his fellow Rolex Series racers cleared out from this past
weekend's "Roar Before The 24" because this is going to be one really weird
month around Daytona International Speedway.

As sure as motor oil is slippery, there was hardly a time over the last
three decades when motorsports' sounds and smells didn't permeate the area
for all of each January.

It'll be different this year without testing previously unconstrained to the
Rolex 24's Test Days (a.k.a. "Roar Before the 24") and would've otherwise
continued through to the traditional start of Speed Weeks, the Jan. 24-25
Rolex 24 At Daytona.

Ah, but "honey-do" jars and their "stuffers" gladly await those formerly
otherwise occupied only with testing.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TEAM . . .

. . . to Penske Racing was conveyed in Sunday's Motorsport.com column. We're
not talking "dissertation" like the one forthcoming, but one should get the
point.

Though no one is immune to broad economic or political conditions, some get
through it better than others - even if intra-company.

For the sake of clarity, both herein and on pit road, this writer uses the
"(y Jose)" or "(yJ)" for the sake of easily distinguishing CGRwFS from
CGRwF(yJ)S, because they are different business entities.

The sportscar, or "Jose" (Felix's younger brother, who is about 23) side is
based in Indianapolis, quite literally alongside the open-wheel side,
whereas the non-Jose associated CGRwFS operation is based in Concord, N.C.,
ground-zero of the NASCAR world's race shops.

Though in the Indy outfit's bowels - say, at the parts counter - a sportscar
mechanic just can't walk up and get a new shop rag without the parts
department having accounted for that rag's cost and to which operation it
will be assessed (true, right down to that rag).

Combined, by the close of the 2008 racing season, the three Ganassi-related
organizations provided enough wins to push Chip Ganassi, the owner, over the
100-race-win mark.

(The following is a little number-crunching for people having such heads;
commentary continues following the closing parenthesis.

Having posted winning numbers dwarfing those in stock cars - even if the
"CART" numbers are entirely removed from consideration - the Indianapolis
IRL side of the Ganassi operation has been the better performing even though
Concord had a two-year head start (and, no, CART and IRL cars aren't "the
same"). Throw in the Rolex Series side - also a comparative late starter at
three years behind Concord - and the disparity in wins becomes more than
twice as great. Worse, IndyCar and Rolex series' wins occurred during
respective seasons having half as many or fewer races.

Excepting Concord, each Ganassi motorsports operation has captured its
respective "big" race, the Indianapolis 500 and the Rolex 24 At Daytona more
than once, each.

The Indianapolis side comes under the direction of Mike Hull.

According to Hull, successfully meeting a team goal is something that can be
done only by a team's willingness to share information with others within
the organization, even if it also happens to have more than one driver
searching for the same checkered flag.

"To Target Chip Ganassi Racing, 'team' to us isn't limited to just one
driver in IndyCar, or one set of drivers in a single car in the Rolex
Series. Our team - our entire organization - wins whether it's Scott Dixon
in one car or Scott Pruett and Memo Rojas in another."

Dario Franchitti.

Photo by Colleen Nixon - Fastlines.

Indianapolis 500 winner (2007) and 2007 IndyCar Series champion Dario
Franchitti: "It's something Tony Kanaan and I did pretty effectively" while
the two were Andretti Green Racing teammates in the IRL. "Tony and I were
very good friends before we were ever teammates and it translated very well
when we became teammates," Franchitti continued.

"Not to say that only a good friend can be a good teammate, but we have this
level of trust, a level of understanding about what he needed from a car,
what I needed from a car, and it worked very, very well."

"In a sportscar environment you have to work together because it's a team
goal," Franchitti added. "You have to get as much information as you can.
It's not about who gets the fastest lap in the car, it's about which team
won the race. It's the whole team effort when it goes to sportscars."

"When it goes to Indy Cars, I know that my working together with Scott
(Dixon) and, needless to say, by his working as close as he can with me, the
better chance of meeting our objective, which is to see that our team, Chip
Ganassi Racing, wins."

In 2004 at Homestead-Miami Speedway and in only the team's second Rolex
Series Daytona Prototype race, Pruett (who has tallied the single-greatest
number of driver wins for Ganassi - all occurring in the Rolex Series) was
walking from the team's pit to the team hauler.

The race was done, with then co-driver Max Papis having closed it out with a
respectable 7th-place finish after having produced, with the cooperation of
Jan Magnussen in Kevin Doran's No. 27 DP, one of the wildest race-car video
sequences yet seen in racing - it and sponsor CompUSA would go on to make
newscast highlight reels throughout the country, if not the world - and yet
Pruett was madder than a wet hen.

A reporter asked him the matter, to which Pruett responded by correctly
pointing out that the team had been in a position to win the race and, if
not, likely would've taken second but that such had not occurred.

In further putting the pieces together, Pruett said that only consistent
best finishes can produce championships and that the successful pursuit of
which had, at least on that day, been stymied by his co-driver.

Lastly, Pruett stated it was the "team" which lost the race based on the
actions of "one member" within it.

To Papis' credit, the driver later acknowledged he could've done better
under the circumstances and, more so to his credit, did exactly that as the
pair later that year scored CGRwF(yJ)S' first Rolex Series driving
championship (Pruett won his second Rolex Series championship in 2008,
teaming with Mexico's Memo Rojas).

As was recently demonstrated by Penske Racing when it made sure 16
championship-winning but otherwise expendable sportscar crew members were
retained within the organization after their 2008-season ended,
accomplishing championships is about "team."

Juan Pablo Montoya.

Photo by Action Sports Photography.

Lest anyone start at this point mumbling something about CGRwFS having
furloughed 70-some-odd people when the Franchitti Sprint Cup team closed or,
perhaps, still others in the probable DEI-Ganassi merger (the attorneys
still are working it all out and until the names are on the dotted lines and
the contracts stop flying, the merger still isn't a "done deal"), let us
point out the Concord arm has yet to win a championship, also remembering
that, given the current climate, Ganassi could've just walked away from
stock car racing - leaving it in the dust of two very successful programs.
Sure, Ganassi's walking would've caused a headline or two, but it also
would've been lost in other headlines just like it - maybe even "DEI Closes
Forever."

Well, why hasn't Ganassi just walk away?

Given this writer's perspective, the Concord operation seems to have caused
far more "trouble" as compared to the Indianapolis side, which already has
sponsors for its open-wheel (Target) and sportscar (TELMEX, just renewed)
sides.

Furthermore, Target also is sponsoring the equivalent of one car in the Jan.
24-25 Rolex 24 At Daytona. By any standard, such funding is equal to running
about 60-percent of the entire Rolex Series season. A 24-hour race, nearly
equal to ten 2.5-hour races, ain't cheap.

(In fact, by the way, add and compare the respective total number of
2008-season race hours undertaken in each of the top-two North American-only
sportscar series to learn as to which can accurately lay claim to being a
true "endurance" series - the essence and heart of real sportscar racing).

If anything, Ganassi should be applauded for having the temerity for
sticking out Concord's hassles. But if those Concord guys want to learn how
to keep their jobs, then they need only become "champions."

To see how to do such, see the above.

Ganassi, already a champion, also fights like one. Muhammad Ali also took a
few punches from the likes of Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Frazier and George
Foreman, but Ali eventually prevailed over each.

In barely three weeks, crew members and drivers representing CGRwF(yJ)S and
Target Chip Ganassi Racing will be teaming to seek an unprecedented
fourth-consecutive Rolex 24 At Daytona crown. No other team has done such -
only one other team, Brumos Racing, has scored three-straight - in the famed
race's 47 years.

As tough as such may be to accomplish, I found no other team willing to bet
against Ganassi at this past weekend's Daytona test.